Interesting Article About Physical Pain and Emotional Pain

I always felt when my depression was really bad that there was very clearly a physical component to it. No question about it. My old psychiatrist would never listen to me. Anyhoo, saw this today and thought people might be interested in it.

Alleviating Social Pain: A Double-Blind, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Trial of Forgiveness and Acetaminophen | Annals of Behavioral Medicine | Oxford Academic

So I am not sure how to "thank" posters or give hugs or any of that yet. I tried to thank you, but am pretty sure I got it wrong.

Aaaanyway, thanks for the share. I struggle with chronic illness with a large pain component, as well as mental health stuff like anxiety and depression that go hand in hand with chronic illness. But I have also had my share of traumatic emotional... I'll call them, experiences (which seems like the understatement of the century, but I digress). My point is that I recognize that my conditions have a huge mental/emotional component. Ex. If I get really stressed about anything from the death of a close friend to an exciting vacation I have been planning, I am guaranteed to trigger a migraine. The best I can do is try and manage the stress, which sometimes means deliberately dissociating from the trigger (I am that seemingly cold person who never seems excited about anything and never cries before or during a funeral - for this reason) long enough to get past the event, before the migraine kicks off. Its weird, but it is what it is. Took me years and a lot of regretful absences from important events before I figured that out.

That is the same for my Interstitial Cystitis. Stress => flair up. Every single time without fail. My disease processes are like stress-o-meters. Lol.

The biggest trouble I have come up against for dealing with the medical establishment is that even acknowledging a causal link is regarded as me admitting that my health issues are psychosomatic. Seriously, like I thought my spinal stenosis into existence or something. Maybe I just didn't believe strongly enough. Yes, I am being a bit sarcastic here, but its a fine line I guess. In my experience, the war on pain patients (aka. The opioid crisis) means many physicians (and lawmakers) are looking for any excuse to minimize, marginalize, and invalidate people coping with painful conditions, so they can call admissions of pain "drug seeking behavior", or better yet, say its "all in our heads" and send us off to therapy.

I am already in therapy, because I genuinely believe there is a huge benefit in using every resource available to mitigate my pain, and that includes CBT and relaxation techniques, along with a lot of other things. I tell you what, if you live with severe pain every day, you will try just about anything to manage it, not just narcotics. Pills are just one more tool in a very large and varied toolkit. Trouble is, when powerful groups are looking for evidence with a strong confirmation bias, research like this may be used to invalidate patients' individual experiences with pain and pain generators.

Sorry to go off on a tangent... its a bit of a touchy topic for me, but I still find it really interesting and helpful to read articles like this. So, thank you again for sharing.

Childbirth was a ten on the pain scale, but it was quick. Long endured severe emotional pain is worse IMHO.

This is interesting... But they did not mention a control of those who demonstrated daily forgiveness without acetaminophen. All this proves is that it is perhaps effective alongside forgiveness. In my most humble opinion, forgiveness is pretty powerful on its own.

The body mind connection is absolutely fascinating. Thanks for posting this!

Truth. Childbirth is no joke, but feeling daily that you don't belong or that you're being mistreated is a slow burn that builds up to excruciating levels in some cases.

This is a cool topic. When I lived in China, I would regularly visit the Buddhist monks who lived in a temple up in the hills behind the university. I often took the same two students with me to act as translators. We often discussed how meditation can heal physical pain sensation in addition to mental pain. So, it's great that science has finally caught up with what the Buddhists have known for centuries.

bpcyclist, I am no less than shocked at your former pdoc's dismissal of your assertion that physical pain is an aspect of depression. I thought that every mental health professional knew that depression and body pain are strongly connected.

The article is fascinating! I remember way back when I was describing depression to my first pdoc (over 30 years ago) the first symptom I described was a "sinking feeling" or the sensation that I was "folding in" at the spot between the very top of my stomach and the lowest point of my chest. When I took my first AD's that awful sinking/folding feeling went away.


Still, I have been in physical pain of some kind all of my life. Over the years, by putting together my own experiences, experiences of others who have mental illness, and material I've read I am convinced that certain types of physical pain are directly linked to mental illness.

I have never found acetaminophen especially helpful for pain, but I could swear that ibuprofen reduces not only pain, but to a degree, depressive feelings.


An intriguing topic. Thanks for posting it.

Interesting theory but taking tylenol every day is not good for your liver.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sarahsweets Interesting theory but taking tylenol every day is not good for your liver.

I am concerned about taking Advil almost every day. But then, chronic pain is a tremendous stress on mind and body.

I am no expert at it, that is for sure, but I was able to meditate away my pretty nasty mouth pain the other day. It just--went completely away after awhile. Weird.

Yeah, well, she also informed me that I was on "speed" when my then new psychiatrist started me on Adderall because I was so chronically exhausted due to my depression. I loved that psychiatrist, the old one, God rest her soul, because she did try to help me, best she could. But she was veeeeery old-fashioned and she was more than happy to not ideally treat my depression. So long as I wasn't manic, she was fine. Pisses me off, in retrospect. These people are more than happy to let us suffer in our depression, in my opinion. Anyway, yeah, old times.

I am so sorry you have been in physical pain for so long. I hope it somehow gets better soon. I personally never take Tylenol. It has never done anything for me.

That's pretty much what the monks told me and my 2 students about how meditation functions.

Not really weird. What you did, is to change the pathways in your brain's pain receptors. To give a scientific explanation. That's how meditation works. It alters brain waves.

If you focus on something, you manifest it. That's how meditation works.

I found some Western research online about clinical trials that measured the effects of meditation used by a group of patients who suffered with chronic pain. According to the clinical trials, over 90% of the patients eliminated their physical pain through the practice of meditation.

That is fantastic that you were able to meditate your mouth pain away, bpcyclist. You have a very strong mind and obviously practice meditation enough to where you can achieve that. You are proof that mindful meditation actually works.

Thanks for posting this thread. Very cool.

Thank you for this article. Very good stressing the effect of social interactions, possibly pushing acetaminophen too much.
The difficulty I see with the forgiveness aspect is that, while we should all attempt to avoid bad social relationships or try to heal them when feasible if they are important to us, oversimplification of the concept of forgiveness could pose problems for those of us with a lot of boundary problems. Forgive,forgive,forgive is not a good approach for people who let people consistently take advantage of them and there are many of us on the forum. I liked Blanche’s reference to Buddhism which I like for the meditation and mindful aspect. However, I want to remember to walk away from some people and situations rather than letting bad situations occur repeatedly trying to forgive people who need to be avoided .

Excellent post luvyrself.

Great points. I agree an oversimplification of forgiveness and perhaps a misunderstanding cause issues.

My therapist told me one of her mentors said 'forgiveness occurs when you no longer seek retribution'. I like that model. It isn't perfect, but it essentially implies the cycle of attachment to the issue ceases when you no longer seek to see the other person affected. You are spot on about boundaries and needing to walk away sometimes. In my mind forgiveness can occur while setting boundaries. You can walk away while carrying neutral feelings for another. I have forgiven and stood my ground before. There are so times when I have just paid lip service to forgiveness, but I was still attached and invested in the other person 'learning their lesson'.

Another teacher offered in a book I'm reading that forgiveness is the giving of space for a situation to come to completion or grow or go wherever it needs to next. She said not offering forgiveness keeps one anchored to the event that caused pain. Sometimes anchoring in can be beneficial I think as it helps us to learn the magnitude of some events and issues. However, eventually offering space so that you can free yourself from that anchor is something worth exploring.

Great post, Fern, on such a complex topic. It’s so rewarding how flat out brilliant many of us are understanding these nuances. No surprise, many bipolars , schizophrenics (John Nash) too have had some of the most brilliant minds in history.
These discussions fly in the face of people who stigmatize us. Thanks posters for making this such a great day!

I'm just standing on the shoulders of others and applying their concepts.

I was placed in a high maintenance/risk wing when I was in IP. It was mostly people with schizophrenic symptoms. They were all very intelligent, but they spoke in codes and symbols. My brain had just taken a spin through psychosis land and I was able to interpret a lot of the 'nonsense' they were communicating. To me it was more like the 'know sense' of brains that were processing information on another level altogether. The more I think about my own experience and what I learned from them it feels like their brains were processing conscious and subconscious information simultaneously. It also appeared that they were tapping into the collective subconscious. They 'knew' things about each other they shouldn't have and got into a lot of fights over it because they were constantly triggering each other. I can't really prove any of that, but its pretty fascinating to me. Maybe we are just a bit more 'dialed in' than most people would give us credit for.

For example, when I was psychotic at one point I was going on and on about how I was an angel and how I was burning with two kinds of fire. Each of these fire types had a specific color in my mind. After I was stable I was sitting at a table coloring while in IP. A young woman came over to me. She had been babbling all day. She colored something in her notebook. I noticed she had a tattoo on her arm of my favorite band at the moment and I spoke to her. She held up her notebook and told me 'you are an angel and these are your colors'. It was the exact shades of the 'angel fire's I had seen in my mind. It freaked me out and made me cry. She cried and said 'now you get it too.'

I don't think I'm an angel. Just wanted to toss that out I think my brain tapped into the angel archetype when I was sick and projected it somehow. I think then she was somehow able to pick up on that. I witnessed her have similar experiences with several others while I was there it was pretty amazing. She was also highly affected by those who were very depressed like it physically broke her to be near them. She would get paranoid and hostile.

Anyway... This was a total derailment, but what you mentioned sparked my memory of her. She was special.

I totally get you, Fern. I sometimes jokingly refer to myself as an idiot savant (brilliant in the way of the Dustin Hoffman character in the movie RainMan). No matter how fast I’m cycling or how ill I feel, I seem to be able to plan ahead and apply outside the box thinking better than most supposedly normal members of my family. I am responsible for huge gains in modest real estate investments that my son and myself really needed,yet he totally doesn’t get me, treats me harshly, and pushes me away. I really feel I have strengths I wouldn't have if I wasnt bipolar (I write)
What a great thread, bp, glad you are feeling better!

Right. And plus, I have to say, nobody has every really taught me how to forgive others, I know how to meditate. I know how to not attach. I know lots of things. CBT. DBT. REBT. But I really don't know what the process is to forgive another person.

Well, a further brief derailment, but I did see my state hospital admission in some kind of vision-like thing pretty much exactly as it occurred--five and a-half years before it ever happened. Not saying I have special powers. No idea what that was all about. But it most assuredly happened. Just sayin'.